Clean It Up
UK General Cleaning Forum => General Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: excelcrewe on February 24, 2007, 06:43:19 pm
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we are new to commercial cleaning , having a few contracts . our problem is cash flow. instead of monthly accounting could you charge weekly? any thoughts?
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Hi excelcrewe,
You could try, and I wish you all the luck.
We work for large developers. We do a month's work, invoice at the end of the month, then wait for their payment run in the month after that!
So for February's work, we will get paid the first week in April (if they are on time!)
It's pretty much the same with all the contract, commercial and industrial cleaning.
We get cash-flow problems when a big, short term contract comes up. You have to pay your staff and running costs at least a month before you get paid for it (and more likely 6 to 8 weeks or more!)
When we started out, it was a simple case of deciding which bills not to pay and blitzing the credit cards to cover everything else. Not ideal, but unless you have a generous sponsor or very nice bank manager, it's what you have to do to stay afloat.
Once you get over that, it gets easier - but takes time to pay off all those cards.
Then you can start putting some away for those extra contracts I mentioned.
It would be difficult to approach your clients and ask them for weekly payments. Many of them are simply not set up to do it. And it would not look very professional on your part.
Good luck with it though...
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hi there,
good for you in starting up, first of all.
most commercial clients like to be paid on a monthly basis,
if you can get some domestic clients for during the day where they either pay the day or by the end of the week.
i and others have put some useful information on another forum which cover this try;
w w w (dot) s c s f (dot) co (dot) uk
but put a . where it says (dot) and keep alltogether.
have to do it this way as im not allowed a direct link to this forum.